How spending the time as a medical student at university

I will tell you in this blog post which course modules you have and how some days of medical students in the third semester at the university in Lübeck looks like.

Firstly a short overview: Medical students have in the third semester neuroanatomy, physiology, biochemistry and psychology. It’s different from one university to another university, but at last each medical student has to do and pass these course modules to write the first part of the medical examination.

Our student everyday life is never monotonous because we have beside theoretical lectures a practical part. It is called an internship, but it only takes a few hours each week. Like any other course of study, we have from Monday to Friday in the morning some lectures and each of these lasts for 45 minutes. These lectures cover specific topics in detail, as well as important facts for the internship.

The practical part includes the so-called internship seminar for the relevant subject, and this seminar can be held on the same day of the internship or the day before. For that, you get a plan about when and on which day of the week you have the seminars and internships of each course module at the beginning of the semester. According to this plan, you are then divided into a small group with about 20 students. 

How do seminars work?

Seminars are opportunites to extend the scientific knowledge and to sum up the important facts. Depending on the course module, two or three presentations will be held in each seminar, but the only difference between seminar and normal lecture is that students are the lecturer. So three students from the group prepare diligently beforehand and give lectures about different contents of the main topic, although appropriate presentation slides, aids, scripts and literature are available to you and your fellow students. And in the plan is whose turn is it next. The duration of the seminars in physiology and biochemistry is two hours. After that, you are free to attend at the lectures or to prepare more for the internship, e.g. by reading the internship-script. And there is definitely a lunch break between the lectures and the start of the internship. So you can recharge your mind with delicious food. 

What awaits you in these internships?

There are several experiments or investigations with detailed steps in the internship-script, and each student carries out the experiments with his partner/group. Additionally, there are kindly student assistants (Hiwis in German), who help and explain if someone needs. When everyone is done with it, there is a debriefing with the professor to answer questions about the experiments. Depending on the course module, there is a verbal test during or at the end of the debriefing. 

I find that these events give us knowledge benefits as well as the opportunity to communicate with each other and to create friendships with fellow students. Then the exchanging of information will be easier and has a positive effect on preparation for these internships.